Latinoamérica21: The Lula government and Latin American integration

During the presidential campaign and in his inauguration speech, President Lula declared that Latin America will once again become a priority for Brazilian foreign policy, in accordance with the constitutional precept that establishes as one of the principles of Brazil’s international relations the search for integration and conformation of a Latin American community of nations. The presence of most of the presidents of the region in the inauguration evidenced the support for the Brazilian leadership and the strength of Brazil’s return to the international scenario.

Recently, presidents Lula and Fernández relaunched the strategic partnership between Brazil and Argentina and highlighted, in a public letter, the relevance of the region in terms of food production and strategic mineral resources. Several economic themes were mentioned: the need for reindustrialization, attracting investments, energy integration, infrastructure investments and boosting international trade.

“We want Mercosur to constitute a platform for our effective integration into the world, through the joint negotiation of balanced trade agreements that respond to our strategic development objectives”. Moreover, in the signed document, the Presidents “undertook to initiate a process of dialogue at the presidential level with the countries of the region towards the relaunch of UNASUR”. The impulses are being given and there are favorable conjunctural elements.

world examples

At a systemic level, regionalism has become a fundamental element of international politics. In addition to economic integration, focused on markets, regionalism refers to the phenomenon of articulation and coordination of regional policies in an attempt to optimize their results.

In this context, major world powers adopt assertive regional policies as State projects. In the case of the US, NAFTA (renamed USMCA) is a central axis of its external action and an important part of its current economic model. In Europe, community policies, in addition to building peace, underlie all areas of regional political action.

In Asia, the most economically dynamic area in the world in this century, regional relations were fundamental for the establishment of virtuous models of development, such as those that generated the rise of the Asian Tigers. Asian economic ties have grown closer in recent decades and good relations with neighbors are a priority in Chinese foreign policy. In addition, recent international phenomena, such as the Covid-19 pandemic, have highlighted the importance of regional supply chains and reinforced the nearshoring trend.

At the regional level, there are also elements favorable to integration. The affinities between the center-left governments are one of the most visible facets, as well as a certain rapprochement on identity and cultural issues. Similar challenges —such as the fight against poverty and inequalities— are elements of convergence. In the construction process of Unasur, for example, there were outstanding agreements such as: the definition of a new socioeconomic development agenda (after the failure of the neoliberal prescriptions); the establishment of a positive agenda encouraging south-south cooperation mechanisms; and the focus on the region’s infrastructural bottlenecks.

Integration into the Brazilian project

Turning to the national level, in the case of Brazil, approximation and integration with neighbors represent a State project, with origins dating back to military governments and developments that permeate all recent governments, from Sarney to Temer, with the exception of Bolsonaro. Certainly, there were differences in the design and integrationist objectives according to the historical moment, but the resilience of institutions such as Mercosur is notorious, even surviving the last government.

Despite the favorable contextual elements, the challenges are many. Integration is a complex phenomenon and, throughout our history, actions related to the union have been hampered by economic difficulties and structural issues, as well as by political obstacles and reduced interest from regional leaders. Ideological issues and discontinued government policies (not consolidated as the State) directly affected the performance of institutions. Alignment with outside powers was also a known element of disintegration.

The extreme right articulation networks, both in Europe and in the Americas, are critical of regional sociopolitical articulation processes and, in their racist ideology, Latinos are treated in a pejorative way. In the case of the Bolsonaro government, direct alignment with the US was privileged, and Brazil’s relations with Latin America, in addition to not being a priority, were relegated to an ideological issue and used in the sense of expanding the country’s polarization. An anachronistic performance, typical of the Cold War period, which showed a mistaken view of the contemporary international scenario, as well as a lack of knowledge of the advantages that regional cooperation can bring to the country. With the pandemic, for example, it was clear that the Unasur Health Council was lacking in defining a faster and more effective response to the challenges that were posed.

Challenges

But integration is experiencing a new favorable moment and there is much to be done. Brazilian leadership, understood here as a proactive action, proposing policies built together with partners, comes with responsibilities.

A hard work of coordination and search for convergences is necessary. The path to regional strengthening passes through the establishment of consensus and the precise definition of the objectives to be achieved, which support concerted policies. The broader and more diffuse the purposes, the more difficult their achievement. One of the biggest challenges, therefore, is to define actions that can be carried out in the coming years, as well as to strengthen the institutions so that they survive the political changes – because our similar difficulties demand, in fact, coordinated actions.

In the relationship with society, it is essential to deny the various fake news from the extreme right, clarifying confusing points and deconstructing the propagated untruths. It is necessary to expand social dialogue, deepen instances of cooperation and participation, consolidate institutions and establish a more solid regional bureaucracy, stimulate education and democratic and citizen culture, strengthen South American identity and the sense of belonging, as well as develop regular mechanisms for publicizing the results achieved by regional policies and institutions. In the medium term, the identity challenge may be a key element. It is necessary to promote the South American identity and mutual knowledge and think outside the box.

There are no simple options in terms of international development policies. However, the historical moment is very favorable, and the time to boost South American regionalism is now. At stake is the reversal or deepening of the region’s peripheralization process on the international stage.